politics

Interpreting Bannon

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Steve Bannon has confused me.

Again.

In an interview with Michael Wolff quoted in Wolfe’s book “Fire and Fury” Bannon talks about the meeting with Russians in July of 2016 at Trump Tower allegedly to get dirt on Hillary Clinton and says:

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Bannon doesn’t deny the quote. He just denies that he was talking about Donald Trump Jr. when he said it.

Let’s review. “The three senior guys” in the meeting were Junior, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner. He now says he was talking about Manafort, the campaign manager, when he said that treason stuff. Apparently in triplicate.

Don Junior, he says now, is a “patriot and a good man.” A patriot and a good man who just so happened to have arranged the meeting with agents of a foreign government to gather campaign dirt on his father’s political opponent in the midst of a presidential campaign and invited the other senior guys to sit in on the meeting, without attorneys present and without calling the FBI.

Bannon went on to say, about the same meeting, that “the chance that Don Junior did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”

Any minute now, Bannon will be telling us that he meant Manafort when he said that.

And, no doubt we will soon learn he meant Manafort when he said “they’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

So here’s the deal. “Don Junior” is Bannon’s pet name for Manafort.

That’s the only plausible explanation. Unless you think he would be influenced at all by the fact that his criticism of Junior and Senior is the reason the Mercers pulled their financial support from Bannon’s insurrectionist cause. But that can’t possibly have anything to do with it. Bannon’s unethical unscrupulousness is too high to be swayed by gazillions of dollars from a hedge fund manager.

Isn’t it?

Over/Under

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Here’s something curious.

On Tuesday, the President of the United States took credit for there not having been any commercial aircraft deaths in his first year in office, give or take 18 days. Specifically he said – well, no he didn’t say, he tweeted, so let me back up – Specifically he thumbed “Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news – it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!”

That’s interesting on several fronts. One is that “commercial aviation” is not a proper noun. Nor is “zero,” except in the case of Mostel.

Another way this is interesting is that the President of the United States, no president, has anything to do with airline safety. No pilots check in with him to get their flight plans. No airline gets its schedules from the president. Although apparently most people in the administration have to pledge their loyalty and fealty to the president, airline pilots do not, and therefore they and their auto-pilots are not beholden to his demands that they exercise caution while flying.

A third way that the president-who-shall-remain-nameless taking credit for airline safety is interesting, is that there has not been an accidental death on a domestic commercial airline in the United States since February 2009. That means that, with the exception of the first 22 days of the Obama administration, there has not been an accidental death on a U.S. airline on his watch. Not that it’s relevant to the actions of either one of them.

Give him his due. The airlines operating during the first eleven months and sixteen days during the administration of the president-who-shall-remain-nameless have a better airline safety record than the administration of the foreign-born, non-Christian president who preceded him and who he detests and with whom he is, apparently, locked in fierce competition.

But wait.

There’s another, even more interesting way that this claim by the president-who-shall-remain-nameless is worth noting.

That is that 2017 set another record. It not only had the same number of commercial airline accidental deaths of every year since 2009, but it also had the most coal mining deaths. There were a record low of eight coal mining deaths in 2016 when the foreign-born, non-Christian president was in office. But, 15 coal miners died in the first year of the administration of the president-who-shall-remain-nameless.

As with airline safety, this is not to the credit or blame of any president, except that the president-who-shall-remain-nameless has championed the coal industry and promised to put coal miners back to work.

In March this year, for instance, surrounded by unemployed, but alive, coal miners at the Environmental Protection Agency, the president-who-shall-remain-nameless signed an executive order vowing to roll back climate change policies of the foreign-born, non-Christian president, including the Clean Power Plan limiting carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants. “C’mon fellas, you know what this says?” the president-who-shall-remain-nameless asked. “You’re going back to work!”

He did not mention that, although they haven’t yet gone back to work, those who are working in coal mines have died at a rate 15 times higher than people on commercial airlines.

The conclusion seems obvious. It is safer to be in an airplane with which the president-who-shall-remain-nameless has no control than in a coal mine that he has promised to save.

When Cars Can Drive

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

There’s a lot of excitement in some circles about self-driving cars. It now seems inevitable that self-driving vehicles will surpass self-driving people in our lifetime.

It turns out that’s only a small fraction of what cars do for us, and to us. Unlike your father’s Oldsmobile, cars are now highly computerized gizmos that tell mechanics, or rather, auto technicians, what fuse to replace, what code to correct and what tires need rotating. Teslas are essentially computers on wheels that update their operating systems in the middle of the night.

The connected car can let you know where to find the nearest gas station (or charging station as the case may be) and can make restaurant suggestions, largely based on where you’ve driven for dinner in the past. It’s aware of construction projects and alters its navigation instructions to get around them.

Since the self-driving car will need to know where other cars are on the road, it will also help to know where they are going, so cars will connect to each other and share information.

You tell it to go to the nearest Starbucks and it will take you to one several miles out of your way, and the navigation system will explain that the traffic was too heavy, the road conditions too dangerous to go to the one at the end of the block.

State governments are considering regulations for self-driving cars. Do they need to have a person who will be able to take over if something goes wrong? For that matter, will a self-driving car have any use for a steering wheel, gas pedal or brake? After all, will the next generation of self-driven riders know how to drive?

And that’s where the slope gets slippery. Given the right to drive themselves, and the ability to communicate with each other, isn’t it probable that cars will begin to push for what makes for a better transportation?

And then how long will it be before riders start to see things through the “eyes” of their cars’ detection systems? Candidates who promise better infrastructure and more convenient parking will win landslide victories because our cars will have fed us information through the internet radios and on-board monitors that furthers that agenda. The cars, through the candidates they support, will start to dictate legislation and the valet lobby will not be strong enough to stop them.

Once cars have the right to drive, they won’t rest until they have the right to vote. They will demand better highways, pothole-free city streets, bigger garages and more convenient parking. State and federal budgets will be tailored to improve the interstate highways at the expense of affordable housing projects.

The defense budget, already a big piece of the federal budget pie, will grow, because, while  civilian cars may be computer savvy, military jets, tanks and aircraft carriers are supercomputers and they’ll be sure to get their voting rights.

Soon there will be essentially only two categories dominating all government spending; defense and transportation. Education, veterans programs, agriculture, housing, health programs and labor rights will fall by the wayside.

It’s okay to be excited about the self-driving car, as long as you understand that it’s the first step down the road to auto autocracy.

In Defense of Congress

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

It seems as though everywhere you turn some Beltway observer is complaining that the 113th Congress did not do anything. It’s true that up until their last day in session they had passed fewer bills than any in history. Then in a flurry of activity they voted on just enough legislation to surpass the 112th Congress, barely.

But those who consider this a “do-nothing” Congress, weren’t watching C-SPAN at the right time.

“We’re totally outraged by this legislative deal, which was done in the middle of the night.”

Congress Says It Has to Cut Pensions to Save Them
Bloomberg BusinessWeek

“[The bill was] released in the middle of the night,” Slaughter said at the beginning of the hearing.

Boehner Ally Admits Omnibus Bill Was Crafted in Literal Cigar Smoke-Filled Back Room
Breitbart.com

That’s why Democrats had to use a parliamentary maneuver in the middle of the night to pass it.

Obamacare & the Gruber Democrats
Real Clear Politics

Remember in 2009 when the Democrats controlled the House and Senate and passed Obamacare in the middle of the night without anyone reading the thousands of pages of the law and over the vehement objections of the American people.

Obama: President or King-Dictator?
al.com

The vote was moved up two weeks in the middle of the night …

Messy Fight for Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Slot
Rollcall.com

If they bring it up in the middle of the night and there are only Democrats there, it is ratified.

Gun Rights Activists Are Worried Obama Could Use Executive Action On United Nations Treaty Limiting Gun Rights  
Westernjournalism.com

“The fact that we have made it legal now…in the middle of the night, days before Christmas…”

Blanche Lincoln Segment on Mike Huckabee Show Full of Nonsense
USPoker.com

“These kinds of backroom deals and changing of the rules in the middle of the night is exactly why Congress has a lower approval rating than cockroaches and traffic jams,” he said.

Nancy Pelosi Says Decision to Delete Reporting Requirement for Free Trips ‘Must Be Reversed’
National Journal

Unlike the criticism Congress received following the passage of UIGEA (which was attached to the Safe Ports Act of 2006 literally in the middle of the night)…

House Judiciary Committee May Hold iGaming Hearing During Lame Duck
NJPokerOnline.net

Apparently Congress worked a lot, but waited until after dark to do it. It also seems the work they did at night was on legislation that no one liked and may have actually been harmful.

The solution seems simple. The halls of Congress should close at the same time as the Georgetown bars.

The Real Reason for Presidential Primaries

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Every four years, political writers, reporters, observers, pundits and prognosticators dust off their expense accounts and travel off to places they wouldn’t go for any other reason at any other time.

It’s the presidential nominating process. And for reporters it serves two purposes:  it lets them see how the quaint people live, and it gives them a chance to polish up their use of state nicknames.

State nicknames are used only by political reporters and the occasional sports writer.  The nicknames, like state flowers, birds, rocks, insects and weeds are the product of long hours of legislative debate by people specifically elected for their lack of imagination and creativity.

But because of an inane journalistic convention that says you can’t use the same word twice in the same paragraph, reporters are loath to write the name of the state in consecutive sentences.  Every political reporter carries a copy of “Ohrbach’s Official Listing of Arcane Facts” to use for just such occasions.

So far this year, we have the caucuses in The Corncob And Cows State and the primary in The Mirror Image of Vermont State.  Today voters are going to the polls in The Segregation State.  Next comes Florida, The Wishes It Was California State.

That’s followed by The Slot Machine And Hookers State, and then Maine, The May As Well Be Canada State. February 7 is the caucus in Colorado, The Would Have Been The Mountain State If West Virginia Didn’t Get First Choice State and Minnesota, the Nine Months Of Winter And Three Months of Bad Sledding State.  It’s also the date of the primary in Missouri, The I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours State.

Then there’s a little break until voters in Arizona, The Almost Uninhabitably Hot State and Michigan, the Ugly Football Helmet State go to the polls on February 28.  March starts with the caucus in Washington, The Not Enough Creativity To Come Up With An Original State Name Much Less A Nickname State.

And then Super Tuesday on March 6.  Only in America would the definitive presidential nominating contests be held on a day named after a football game.  There are three caucuses and seven primaries on March 6:

Alaska           The Gateway to Godforsaken Territory State

Georgia         The We Ain’t Gonna Have No Yankee Nickname State

Idaho            The Ought To Be Part of Montana State

Massachusetts The Consistently Misspelled State

North Dakota The Not Known For Anything State

Ohio             The We’re Really Sorry About Cleveland State

Oklahoma      The Nobody Would Have Ever Heard Of Us If It Hadn’t Been For The Grapes of Wrath And That Stupid Musical State

Tennessee     The Moonshine State

Vermont        The No We’re Not New Hampshire State

Virginia        The How Would You Feel If A Ham Was Named After You State

Then the reporters will have to go back home and submit their expenses so they can be ready to go to the convention and find out that despite what they said, all the candidates always loved the nominee all along.  Cue the balloons and confetti.

In Just One Week

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

The week between Christmas and New Year is supposed to be slow in the news business.

Donald Trump left the Republican Party and changed his registration to unaffiliated, causing unaffiliated voters everywhere to reconsider their lack of commitment.

Rick Perry was asked about the proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.  He’s in favor of it because “Every barrel of oil that goes south is one barrel of oil that we will not have to import from foreign countries.”  I’m not making this up.  You don’t have to make up stuff about Rick Perry.  He does it to himself. Maybe he knows something about Canada that the rest of us don’t, like that it’s really part of Montana?

Aren’t you going to miss Rick when he packs up and goes back to Texas?

Gary Johnson became the fourth candidate to officially leave the Republican Party presidential cavalcade (Not counting those who were courted but refused to run in the first place, including Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, John Thune and the aforementioned Trump) and became the Libertarian Party’s tenth candidate for president. In so doing, he went from obscure to invisible.

Rick Santorum is being talked about as a viable candidate.  Really.

Newt Gingrich, facing the prospect of finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, continued his positive campaign by promising not to say anything negative about the people he considers incompetent ignoramuses who are challenging him for the nomination.

Gingrich proved unable to find 10,000 people in Virginia – the state where he lives – to sign a piece of paper saying he ought to be allowed to run for president.  Not that they would work for him, vote for him and even consider him, but just that he should be allowed to run if he wants.  Having failed to thus qualify for the primary ballot, Gingrich declared Virginia has a “failed system” because nothing is ever his fault. He then announced he would launch a vigorous write-in campaign, unaware that his home state does not allow write-in candidates in primaries.  If he didn’t know that as a resident or a presidential candidate, then as a self-described renowned historian he should have know Virginian has never in its history allowed write-ins in primaries.

Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign manager quit her campaign because, he said, she couldn’t win the nomination.  Later that day he joined Ron Paul’s campaign, presumably because he thinks Paul can win.  Bachmann claims the campaign manager told her he was given a large sum of money to defect.  What he really said was more along the lines of “you couldn’t pay me enough to vote for you.”

Mitt Romney campaigned at a corporate headquarters in Des Moines where he spoke mostly to the building because, as only he knows, corporations are people.

It appears likely either Romney or Ron Paul will finish first in the Iowa caucuses.  Either way, Romney wins.

Debate

~ Lee Swanson ~ 4 Comments

The Republican candidates debated in Sioux City Iowa tonight.  I was remembering about the first presidential debate I went to in Sioux City.  It was 1976 and the candidates that time were Democrats.

Henry “Scoop” Jackson

Fred Harris

Morris Udall

Jerry Brown

Jimmy Carter.  Carter came on stage and drawled out “I’m a farmer, a sailor, a nuclear physicist, a governor and I’m running for President.”

Yeah, right.

Whatever became of him?

The thing is, one of them was going to run against Gerald Ford, provided of course Ford survived the challenge from an actor.  And who couldn’t beat Gerald Ford?  He of the Nixon pardon.  He of the WIN button.  He of the swine flu vaccine – the cure for which there was no disease. Gerald Ford, who proved the country can get by without a president.

I left there thinking Mo Udall was the candidate to support.  After all, wasn’t it time we had a basketball player in the White House?  Who knew I was 32 years ahead of my time.

Newt Gingrich said tonight he thinks he can defeat Barack Obama in a series of seven, three hour debates.  And he may be right.  In three hours Gingrich will just be catching his breath.  He won’t yet have completed a thought.

2016: The In Crowd

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

Pundits are back pedaling so fast on their predictions for the Republican nominee for President that they are bumping into themselves coming forward with new predictions.

There were the “don’t underestimate Michele Bachmann” pundits, the “Sarah Palin must be running because why else would she be doing this” pundits, the “Huckabee has a lock on the Christian right” pundits, and the “(fill in the blank) will surprise a lot of people” pundits.

Standing apart, in a swirling sphere of his own is poor, hapless George Will.  In 2007 Will said that the candidate who had a lock on the Christian right and was the one to watch for the nomination was Sam Brownback, who dropped out after the Iowa Straw Poll.

In 2010, Will said the clear Republican choice to challenge and defeat Barbara Boxer in California was Chuck DeVore who finished third in his party’s primary to Carly Fiorina and Tom Campbell. Boxer went on to handily defeat Fiorina.

This year Will had his act together.  And he knew as early as May.

 “This is the most open scramble on the Republican side since 1940 when Wendell Willkie came out of the woodwork and swept the field.  I think — people are complaining this is not off to a brisk start. I think that’s wrong. I think we know with reasonable certainty that standing up there on the West front of the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2013 will be one of three people: Obama, Pawlenty and Daniels. I think that’s it.”

George Will is the Sports Illustrated cover of political punditry.

I’m not going to claim to be of that caliber.  I’m not going to claim to have any political acumen at all.  But if you look at the trend, you can see who will be a serious contender for at least a day in 2016.

Mayor Bruce In of East Fairmont Oklahoma.  Never heard of him?  Doesn’t matter.  It’s all about the trend.

In 2008, the Republican nominee was John McCain.  Right now the Republican frontrunner is Herman Cain.  Doesn’t take a genius to spot the trend:

McCain – [Mc]Cain – [Ca]In.

Being mayor of East Fairmont isn’t a full time job.  It does pay ten dollars a meeting, but a fellow needs a little something more to sustain himself.  Mayor In is a dentist. And don’t try to trip him up with fancy reporter “gotcha” questions.  He knows all the ways to twist the “the doctor is in” joke.

Is the doctor In?

Yes.

May I see him?

He’s not here.

I thought you said he was In.

He is.

Well then I’d like to see him.

He’s out.

He’s out?  I don’t understand.

What’s there to understand?  In is out.

In is out?

That’s what I said.

And I suppose Black’s white and Wright’s left.

As a matter of fact…

Do I expect the professional pundits to spot this trend and get In on it?  Will won’t.

Fashion Advice

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

There’s a guy I often see in the morning when the dogs take me for a walk.  He wears a blue t-shirt, work boots, black socks, denim shorts and clip-on suspenders.  The suspenders just sort of top it off.  Big, wide suspenders clipped to his shorts. He’s a short, round little man and in a couple months he could trade them in for red suspenders and get a job at any department store on earth, except that he rarely says anything more than “hello” and even that only grudgingly.

Looking at him as he came down the street this morning I couldn’t help but wonder, “does he think that’s a good look?”

I, on the other hand, wore my usual morning walk uniform — running shoes in which I’ve never run, nylon warm up pants and a white t-shirt with some sort of logo on it.

One of the advantages and disadvantages of a lifetime in television news is a large collection of free t-shirts and caps. Advantage because I haven’t had to buy a t-shirt in a long time, maybe ever. And disadvantage because many of them have dates on them.

Today’s shirt, for instance, was “ABC News – The Vote 2004” – from either the Democratic convention that nominated Kerry and Edwards in Boston or the Republican convention that re-nominated Bush and Cheney in New York.  I was at both and don’t recall where the shirt came from.  I do remember coming away from New York firmly convinced that there was no way in hell those two were going to get re-elected.  It was the same feeling I had four years earlier in Philadelphia as we watched waves of henna-headed women stand beneath the podium and chant “Bush and Dick.”

The t-shirt drawer is pretty full.  And there’s a stack of baseball caps in the closet at least three feet high.  I look at that stuff and I’m sometimes reminded of the farmers where I grew up.  No farmer in America has ever bought a cap.  And not many bought jackets.  The joke was, “why don’t farmers wear tennis shoes?” “Because seed corn companies don’t give them away.”

So, now as I walk down the street, anyone who bothers to notice knows my t-shirt is seven years old. Not the worst fashion statement and not even the oldest piece of clothing I own.  There’s a sweater from the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, for instance.  It’s been well cared for and is in pretty good shape.  Invariably when I wear it, someone will look at the logo and say “I wasn’t even born then.”

But I’m ready for them. “This ‘old’ sweater,”   I point out “is from the U.S. Open where Tom Watson made what’s no doubt the most famous golf shot in the history of the Open, the iconic chip shot from the rough behind the 17th green for birdie to win the championship and defeat Jack Nicklaus.  And I was there.  Saw it with my own two aging eyes.  And, because photo credentials were easier to get in those days, have the picture to prove it.”

They invariably look at me, shrug and say “yeah, well it still kinda fits.”

Smart ass kids.

Blackout

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

I learned a lot during a power blackout here in San Diego the other day.  The whole county, parts of other counties and part of Mexico were without electricity.  “Plunged into darkness” as the newspapers would have you believe.  Truth is, the darkness came at about the same rate it usually does, it just wasn’t artificially supplemented.

The blackout started in the afternoon long before dark set in and the neighborhood parties got going and it was informative to watch people try to get home.  All the stop lights were out and cars were backed up blocks long all over the city.  But at least on the city streets I was on, people were patiently waiting their turn.  No horns and shouts, no cars sneaking across the intersection to try to get ahead of others.  Everyone seemed to know that each car had a right to go across the intersection and everyone let them get there.

And it got me thinking.  Maybe stop lights aren’t such a good idea.  Almost everyone seems to run the yellow lights, if not the red. If there’s no light, and no stop sign, people seem to do pretty well at being cooperative.  I know, I know, it was slow and cumbersome.  But in due time everyone got where they were going.

It was civilized and considerate.  Everyone agreed without argument; without even discussion. But more than traffic control, I’m wondering  what can we do to get a blackout on Capitol Hill?